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Technology Stocks : The New QLogic (ANCR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: iceburg who wrote (17515)	7/30/1998 3:12:00 PM
From: Technocrat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29386

Steve, I am puzzled by your comments. Agreed that there are alliances and standards committees which can meet in smoke-filled rooms to hash out specs and techie lore about equipment interoperability. However, I have never heard such attempts at fellowship legally prevents a company from competing in the marketplace. What nitwit CEO would ever sign such an agreement? How would it be enforceable? If you were hawking the best equipment what would entice you to glob your stuff with inferior wares only to be forced to keep quiet about your successes? Cisco, 3COM, Bay Networks, Ascend, Fore, and the other network players do not sign such agreements to my knowledge. Now money, big money, can entice an agreement. For example, when large companies settle lawsuits they can force conditions about non-disclosure. Something for something. If a huge OEM wanted Ancor to keep mum or avoid crowing about switch performance and compensates this silence with contracts or cash, I can see that as reasonable. The scenario seems improbable to me except for short periods of time such as a few weeks. The marketplace is just too efficient to hold secrets like that in check for very long. If there are head to head test results, somebody is keeping score. Are we to assume the engineers and alliance members are keeping this all top secret? Are all these members prevented from trading stock since they are privy to insider information? Isn't this the same group Ancor is trying to sell switches to? One has to assume the results have been made semi-public just like Ancor's financials were leaked last month. The persistent NDA excuse just does not hold up to logical scrutiny in my opinion. Without compensation, there would have to limits to any agreement. Kurt